Tag: photograph

By the nature of more time together, and being the oldest, and their love of watching sports, there are infinitely more photos of Tim with A. She was the quintessential Daddy’s girl. R has always been attached to me, and it seemed whenever dividing and conquering was necessary, Tim took A, and I took R. He did a lot of fun daddy-daughter things with them both on Sunday mornings when D was first born, including an adventure where he printed out a map and they followed it all over the county… to Home Depot, Lowe’s, Barnes and Noble, Target….

Despite there being less total photos, R was daddy’s girl too. He adored her. And she adored her daddy. I love the picture I have of them in the hammock on her 4th birthday where he posted “chilling like April birthdays do.” The shared birthday month and astrological sign was a special connection for them.

She is our sensitive flower, and I know she struggles with her grief. She sometimes tells me she can’t remember his face. We have pictures all over so I don’t point this out. I don’t think a picture will help. She is getting her little heart and head around her grief and her loss, and she has poignant words for it sometimes. These have included “I can remember daddy’s glasses, but I can’t remember his face.”

These photos were from a year ago today. A Sunday afternoon when Tim returned from a brew tour weekend in Richmond with 5 of his best friends. He walked in and told me he was tired. I was like um, right, but you know I had all 3 kids all weekend, right?!? D was down for his nap, and Tim asked R if she wanted to go nap with him in the hammock. “Yes!” and they both fell asleep. I took the photo below of them in the backyard from our window. Then I brought the monitor outside. A had run down to play at a neighbor’s house, and I was sneaking off for a quick pedicure with one of my friends (and a wife of one of his friends from the brew tour!) The other two photos he took, their view from the hammock, and of course – a selfie of he and R.

I am grateful for the photos. I can always tell her how much he adored her, but a picture speaks a thousand words.

The memories are hitting me hard right now. I am marching steadily towards the anniversaries of those traumatic days, and I feel them coming like a freight train. Each day I can remember with more precision what we were doing last year, because they were his last days with us. How crazy to think we had no idea. But again, how glad I am for his sake that we had no idea.

I am falling behind. I have a hundred blog posts in my head and half started, but this one was longing to be written.

This weekend I officially joined a fitness place, and went to a class Saturday morning. I like it because the music is good and motivating and they tell you what to do constantly so you don’t have to think. During the floor exercises, when I was lifting weights I saw myself in the mirror, and somehow in the combination of music, adrenaline, and tingling of my soft muscles that had gone unused basically since November, I looked myself right in the eye and thought, “You are not dead.” “I’m not dead.”

I felt like a piece of me, half of me, sometimes more, died last June. In my post 6 months, an open letter to my love, I mention that sometimes I feel Tim would be disappointed in me. I don’t think he’d be disappointed in me when I do what I have to do to heal, or to survive, when I allow the kids more screen time than I ever would have “before,” but I think he’d be disappointed in me when I do more of the holding on, the feeling sorry for myself, the wallowing.

Tim had a complicated relationship with death. I believe now it was mostly a result of not ever experiencing it up really close. I think he was mostly afraid of it. Having experienced it up really close, as close as it gets, I can say there is a beauty in the sadness. This is something I’ve heard from other widows too. Living up close to death seems to be the only thing that can truly rid us of our fear of it.

But it is a challenge to always look at the positive, look for the good, find the silver lining. When I hold on too much, is when I think Tim would be disappointed. When I do things for other people, or for appearances. He always hated that. He’d tell me if he could to keep living. He’d tell me that I don’t have to wait a certain amount of time for anything; that there is no formula; that weeks, months, years from now, he will still be dead. He’d tell me: Don’t miss out on anything today because you are simply missing me and feeling sorry for yourself.

I can both love Tim, and be alive. I can stretch, strain, and push all my muscles. I am reminded of this in music. And I felt like it was a nudge from Tim that gave me that thought. It may seem overwhelming how much life I have left without him. But I have it. I have to accept that. I am not dead. And there is great beauty in that if I can find it. And live it.

My sister-in-law asked me after Tim died if I hear every song differently now, and I really do. Every love song has a different kind of meaning by me ears. All of them.

I really love Ed Sheeran’s song Photograph, and when I heard it the first time after Tim died, I heard it with new ears, and it resounded with me in many ways.

Loving can hurt, loving can hurt sometimesBut it’s the only thing that I knowWhen it gets hard, you know it can get hard sometimesIt is the only thing that makes us feel alive

We keep this love in a photographWe made these memories for ourselvesWhere our eyes are never closingHearts are never brokenAnd time’s forever frozen still

So you can keep meInside the pocket of your ripped jeansHolding me closer ’til our eyes meetYou won’t ever be alone, wait for me to come home

Loving can heal, loving can mend your soulAnd it’s the only thing that I know, knowI swear it will get easier,Remember that with every piece of youHm, and it’s the only thing we take with us when we die….

~ Ed Sheeran, Photograph

If love is the only currency we take with us when we die, then Tim died an incredibly rich man. He lived big, and loved big and openly, and people loved him back. So many of us loved him. He loved life. And life loved him. He took so much love with him when he died.

I can only try to live my life so that I can be as rich on the day I die.